The amount of health you have depends on your character's level. Each time you level up, you can choose whether to add ten points to your health or to one of your other attributes.

Your health attribute can be increased using Fortify Health effects. Enchantments are particularly useful, since they have a constant effect. With spells and potions, care is needed when relying on Fortify Health effects in the middle of combat. When the effect expires, you will immediately lose all the bonus health, potentially killing your character.

You lose health when taking damage. The red bar in the bottom center of the screen shows you the current status of your health (although this bar will be invisible when health is full). There are many ways to restore health:

Health slowly regenerates over time. You regenerate 0.70% of your maximum health each second outside of combat and 0.49% during combat. Most NPCs do not regenerate health during combat.

As a result, sleeping or waiting fully restores your health - under normal circumstances, you always need 142.86 seconds (nearly 2 1/3 minutes) to heal to full, well under the hour minimum of waiting or sleeping.

Your health regeneration rate can be increased by Regenerate Health effects, including potions and enchanted items.

The rate at which enemies regenerate health is determined by their race, and may be supplemented by racial abilities (for example, trolls have a racial ability allowing enhanced in-combat health regeneration).